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Review of A History of English: From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic

AUTHOR: Ringe, Don TITLE: A History of EnglishSUBTITLE: Volume 1. From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-GermanicSERIES TITLE: A Linguistic History of EnglishPUBLISHER: Oxford University Press YEAR: 2006

David Stifter, Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Wien

[Preliminary remark: Because of the lack of diacritic symbols in theemail-format, in the following review for reconstructed forms a less thanadequate approximation to what they usually look like in Indo-European andGermanic studies will have to be used.]

SUMMARYDon Ringe is Professor in Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. He haspublished on a wide range of Indo-European (IE) topics, and he is the author ofa historical phonology of Tocharian. This volume is the first in a series by theauthor which aims to trace the entire recoverable history of the Englishlanguage, from the earliest reconstructable stage, the Proto-Indo-European (PIE)language spoken in the centuries around 4000 BC, probably in the river valleysof Ukraine, to the present. The first volume describes the development of PIEinto Proto-Germanic, both of which are unattested, reconstructed stages in thepre-English language history. Frequent references in this volume to the as yetunpublished vol. 2 give evidence of the tight concept of the series.

Chapter 1: General introduction (pp. 1–3) Ringe briefly sets out the aims and the methodology of the book. It is notprimarily aimed at comparative linguists, but he rather intends to presentreliable information on historical Germanic grammar to readers ''who have notundertaken serious study of Indo-European or comparative Germanic linguistics,nor of the history of English.'' Yet familiarity with the basic concepts ofmodern linguistic theory is required for perusal of the book.

Chapter 2: Proto-Indo-European (4–66) The second chapter begins with Ringe's cladistic tree of the IE language family.How the subgroups of IE relate to one another is no matter of secondaryimportance. As in philology, where the genealogical tree of manuscriptsdetermines editorial choices, in historical linguistics the chosen model ofsubgrouping will have far-reaching consequences on how one has to assess theevidential value of a specific feature attested only in a subgroup of languages.Therefore the genealogical model should always be made explicit. This is whatRinge does: for him, Germanic is part of a Central IE dialect continuum,stretching from Indo-Iranian across Greek to Balto-Slavic and Germanic (p. 5–6).Anatolian, Tocharian, and Italo-Celtic stand outside this central group.

Chapter 2 amounts to an outright introduction into the grammar of the IEproto-language, setting out in a concise, but precise manner the essentials ofhow PIE phonology and morphology are conceived of in modern IE studies. Allgrammatical categories receive attention. Although they are not the primarytargets of the book, this chapter qualifies as a reference grammar or as a pointof departure even for students of non-Germanic philologies.

Chapter 3: The development of Proto-Germanic (67–212) This chapter traces the phonological and morphological changes in the post-PIE,but pre-Proto-Germanic period. To put it into perspective: this period covers,in conservative estimation, 2500 years, from c.3000 BC, by which time the splitinto the principal branches of IE must have occurred, to c.500 BC, when a stagein the linguistic development was presumably reached that can sensibly be calledProto-Germanic. That means that this period is approximately as long as theperiod since then, and it is considerably longer than the period in whichGermanic languages have been actually attested in written texts.

The first, longer part of the chapter (67–151) presents the regular soundchanges which transformed PIE into Proto-Germanic. Most notable among them, andwell presented by Ringe, is the complex of changes known as Grimm's Law (thegreat Germanic sound-shift) and Verner's Law, which radically altered the systemof obstruents, and which left only few lexical items of the language untouched.But Ringe does not neglect very minor changes. For instance, on p. 116, hementions with reservations possible examples of the 'articulatory leap' of *w…kw> *w...p in pre-Germanic. In this context, it may merit consideration whetherthe unexpected treatment of the labiovelars in the cardinal numbers of Germanicis connected with this limited rule: in the numerals '4' and '5', where a reflexof PIE *kw would be expected (i.e. Gmc. **hw), what is found in Germaniclanguages are reflexes of *p. Perhaps what happened was phonetic influence,partly across the lexical boundaries, in the numerical series PIE *KWetWóres,pénKWe, sWék's '4, 5, 6' > pre-Grm. *PetWóres, pémPe, sWéks (vel sim.). (See,however, Schaffner 2001: 170 for an alternative application of the 'articulatoryleap' to the numerals).

The section on the phonology is closed off by a table illustrating the relativechronologies and dependencies of the sound changes (p. 152); a table whichreaders of Ringe's book on Tocharian phonology will find familiar. Intimidatingas it may look at first, presenting the matter in that manner is an interestingway of visualising the complex developments, and particularly of visualising thetime factor.

The second part of the chapter is devoted to the changes in inflectionalmorphology (pp. 151–211). Being much more complex than the developments innominal inflection (196–212), Ringe starts with verbal morphology (153–196):what came out of the relatively intricate aspectual verbal system of PIE inGermanic is a relatively simplified and unified tense-based system. The generaloutlines of the transformations are clear, but some details are still puzzling,like, for example, the origins of the Germanic weak preterite endings, for whichRinge offers his own explanation (167–8).

Chapter 4: Proto-Germanic (213–297)The final chapter offers a grammar of the Proto-Germanic language as it wouldhave looked in a synchronic description after the transformations had takenplace that are described in chapter 3. In a way, this repeats in a systematicand detailed way what was alluded to in the previous chapter. Like in allchapters of the book, the emphasis lies on phonology and inflection;derivational morphology and syntax receive only a very short and passingtreatment at the end. On various occasions Ringe stresses the role which nativeand foreign language learners had in transforming the phonology and morphologyof Germanic (e.g. pp. 171, 215, etc.). This sociolinguistic aspect is a new andinteresting angle to historical linguistics.

EVALUATIONThis is a highly welcome and useful book for scholars and advanced students ofcomparative Indo-European and Germanic linguistics and the history of English.It provides an up-to-date introduction to the earliest stages of the pre-historyof English. Yet, as stated by the author himself in the introductory chapter,this is not really a book for the specialists in historical Germanic linguisticswho require much more detail in a reference book.

Most of the points of criticism that can be raised are minor ones points thatare really questions of personal judgment (and sometimes predilection). It isonly natural in a matter like the reconstruction of an unattestedproto-language, which to a large degree involves personal judgment, that no twoscholars will agree on everything. When in the following I pick out a few pointsin the present book, where I think that more than just a single person couldexpress disagreement, this is not to be misunderstood as nitpicking, but ashighlighting how many details remain controversial even after so much progresshas been made in IE linguistics:

On p. 43, it is a pity that Ringe only remarks in passing that the ending of thePIE thematic ablative singular goes back to an ''endingless loc. sg. in *-e plusthe adverb (postposition?) *ád [...], which clearly did not mean 'to' inpre-PIE.'' This idea is quite interesting, but it goes against the prima-facieevidence in many languages. It would have been helpful if Ringe had given moresemantic and morphological details here, even more so as the original idea wasformulated in a PhD-thesis by Ronald Kim, and therefore is not easily accessible.

On pp. 47–50, Ringe gives a great number of full inflectional paradigms ofreconstructed PIE nouns. While in many cases the paradigms are quite generallyaccepted, I disagree with the inflection of 'woman' on p. 49. The very isolationof the relevant paradigm in Old Irish (and partly in Gaulish) virtuallyguarantees the archaism of its inflection in these languages, and should betaken as a strong indication for the inflection in the IE proto-language. Theattested plural forms like nom./acc. OIr. mná, Gaul. mnas and gen. OIr. ban,Gaul. bnanom (<< *banom) have to be derived from (pre-Celtic = PIE?) *gwnéh2esand *gwnh2óm (or *gwnh2óHom in Ringe's system, with an ending that is anoutright morphological monster), forms, however, which are unreconcilable withthe PIE pre-forms *gwénh2es and *gwnéh2oHom set up by Ringe. It is amethodological decision whether one reconstructs PIE grammar as an ideal andinternally coherent and logical system (which is what Ringe's system would be),or whether one concedes that, like any real language, the grammar of PIE wasstructurally imbalanced to a certain degree.

On p. 46 et passim, on several occasions Ringe reconstructs the PIE word for'sun' as *soh2wl, i.e. a proterokinetic paradigm with o-grade of the root,instead of an e-grade root *seh2wl, as would be expected. While this is totallyirrelevant for Germanic historical linguistics (since *oh2 and *eh2 both had thesame outcome *o: in Proto-Germanic), it should be stressed that there is nocompelling piece of evidence for the preform used by Ringe. Masculine Latinso:l, which could be cited as possibly relevant, does not continue the neuterappellative, but rather an animate internal possessive derivative *seh2wo:l,possibly referring to a sun-god conceived of as a male person (J. Schindler p.c.).

On p. 154, Old Irish do•formaig 'adds to, increases' does not belong to the root*mogh (or rather *magh) 'to be able', but rather to a Celtic root *mak 'toraise, to increase' (Schumacher 2004: 466); whether rare Old Irish mochtae'mighty?' belongs here, is not absolutely sure either.

On p. 186, in the matter of long-vowel perfects of C(C)eC-roots, Schumacher 2005offers a PIE solution.

On two occasions (p. 196 and 263) Ringe makes reference to an alternativepresent paradigm of the verb 'to be' formed from a stem *bi-, which survivesintact only in Old English, beside the ordinary present of the stem *iz-, whichunderlies all other Germanic languages. Rather defiantly Ringe remarks that areconstruction of the pre-forms of this alternative present is not possible, andhe remains somewhat undecided as to the semantics of the verb. But see now theextensive treatment of the matter in Schumacher (2007: 185–200), where it isargued that a habitual present stem *bi- of the verb 'to be' is a commonWest-Germanic innovation, brought about by contact with Celtic languages.

Twice (pp. 194 and 265) Ringe calls the exact etymology of Gothic iddja, OE eode'went' one of the mysteries of Germanic historical linguistics. The most recentliterature he refers to is more than thirty years old. Actually, the two mostrecent contributions to the question are Schumacher 1998 [2001] and Eichner2005, who, however, offer competing solutions.

On p. 270, Ringe ascribes Verner's Law alternations across the Germaniclanguages in neuter a-stems like 'blood' or 'gold' to shifts of the accent,brought about by a derivational rule in the plural formation. But some of theexamples are mass nouns; a plural formation would not be expected in the firstplace. Verner's Law alternations in these instances must either be analogical toneuter a-stem nouns with a regular plural formation, or alternative explanationsare called for (see, for example, Schaffner 2001).

The book not only condenses established wisdom, it also presents newsuggestions, like the development of unstressed (that is, after the stress hadshifted to initial syllables) *ew > *ow > Pr-Germ. *aw (pp. 125–126). Germanicwould thus join in a wide-spread tendency of NW-European languages (Italic,Celtic, Balto-Slavic) for rounding assimilation of *e to *o before the labialglide (modulo the details in the individual languages).

Another point is the following: a phonological feature that connects Germanicwith neighbouring Balto-Slavic is the merger of the inherited non-high backvowels in Germanic: the short vowels resulted in a sound that is traditionallyreconstructed as *a, the long vowels apparently merged in *o: (but see alsoSchrijver 2003 who claims that *a: and *o: remained distinct in certaincontexts, and who has a completely different approach to the problem of thevarious treatments of long, back non-high vowels in final syllables, treated inthis book on pp. 73–75). But it has been suspected that the product of themerger of the long vowels had been low *a: at first as well, which had thenshifted to mid-high *o: only within Proto-Germanic. In that sense, Ringe callsthe rounding of *a: to *o: one of the ''latest reconstructable sound changes'' inthe prehistory of Germanic, ''possibly spreading through an already diversifieddialect continuum'' (p. 147). The evidence he cites is Gothic Rumoneis/ru:mo:ni:s/ 'Roman', which was supposedly borrowed from Latin Ro:ma:ni: at atime when Germanic had not yet acquired *o: (in that reckoning, Latin o:therefore had to be substituted by Germanic *u:), and at a time when Germanicstill had *a:, which subsequently shifted to *o:. Intriguing as this scenariomay look in theory, it does not take into account the historical situation.Instead it is much more likely that *Ru:mo: 'Rome' and *Ru:mo:nas are commonGermanic loanwords from conjecturable Gaulish *Ru:ma: and *Ru:ma:nos, perhapsreflected in inscriptions as ''Matronae Rumanehae''. Putative Germanic BacenisSilua (not mentioned by Ringe), the ''Beech Wood'' in Julius Caesar's Commentarieson the Gaulish War (1st c. BC), is not probative for the existence of *a: atCaesar's time either, because it could have reached the Romans in Gaulicizedshape (i.e. substitution of Gaul. /a:/ for /Germ. [å:] or [o:]); the same istrue for a number of other loanwords. There is ultimately no proof at all thatthe inner-Germanic shift from *a: > *o: occurred at any particularly late pointof time. In fact, it is not possible at all to make any chronological inferencesfor this change (see Stifter forthcoming for more details).

In the context of this putative change, Ringe makes the somewhat mysteriousclaim that the ''latest possible date for direct contacts'' between Germanic andLatin was 113 BC at the battle near Noreia (p. 146). Is this a typo for''earliest possible date'' (or ''latest possible date for first direct contacts'')?Surely Roman-Germanic contacts intensified in the decades after that battle; oneneeds only to think of the Suebian king Ariovistus and his dealings with theRoman senate and Julius Caesar during the latter's conquest of Gaul.

Although the above remarks are minor, a few desiderata are more strongly felt:Ringe takes a cautious position where the evidence allows no clear answer. Whilethis is fine for an introduction, the specialist would like to have presentedall reasonable contributions to a controversial problem, and (s)he would like tohave a reference section where the most important and the most recent literaturefor a topic can be found. This is lacking in the book: for example, in thesection which deals with Verner's Law's effects in nominal inflection (pp.269–271), no mention is made of Schaffner 2001, and in the section on consonantstems (pp. 278–279) no reference is made to Griepentrog 1995. Despite Ringe'scautiousness, a few phenomena have been treated too idiosyncratically: forexample, it is quite astonishing that in the chapter about the reflexes of PIElaryngeals in Germanic no mention is made of the so-called 'Verschärfung', i.e.of the development *-RH- > *-RR-, a sound change which, as far as I can see, islargely accepted among specialists in Germanic linguistics. Only on p. 241, in acompletely different context, does Ringe make a short, dismissive remark. Evenif the author does not believe in a laryngealistic explanation of thephenomenon, it is inexcusable in this case not to cite works such as Lühr 1976or Jasanoff 1978.

The handbook's prime purpose is a formal-linguistic one. Language and grammarare treated as abstract and interrelated systems. The prehistoric sound changesthat constitute the Germanic languages are not simply enumerated, but Ringediscusses them as phenomena with all their effects on morphology and thelanguage system as a whole. This is highly appreciated. But at the same timeRinge's rather abstract approach entails that the book becomes conspicuouslyunphilological. Languages are spoken by real persons at concrete points inhistory, and the language material that has come down to us from earlier periodshas been transmitted under particular circumstances of production andpreservation. The knowledge of all of these factors is important in order toproperly assess the evidential value of the linguistic material with which wehistorical linguists work. To do the author credit, he does on occasion remarkthat a particular form on which a theory hinges is attested only a single time(like, for instance, Gothic lais 'I know'). But more could have been said. It ismy conviction that in a book intended for beginners in historical linguistics,the role of philology cannot be stressed highly enough. After all, it isphilology that not only supplies us with our working material, but which attimes produces physical proof for our theories and hypotheses, for example whena form that we postulated suddenly finds attestation on an inscription. In thiscontext, more Runic texts and Roman-age inscriptions from Germanic areas couldhave been cited.

Another absence that I felt is that the earliest transmission in secondarysources and contact relations, doubtlessly important sources of information forthe prehistoric stages of Germanic, could have been considered more thoroughly.To give an example, it could have been demonstrated that the change e > i instressed syllables before tautosyllabic nasals or before a following i was not aProto-Germanic development, but was only under way by the first century AD, asevinced by material in secondary sources: e.g. the personal name Segimundus inTacitus, or the Finn. loanword teljo 'thwart, rwoing bench' (cp. OHG dilla'board'; Kluge 1913: 129–130).

If it is allowed to formulate a wish-list for the future volumes of the series,it would include: an introductory chapter that gives a survey of the mostimportant handbooks and secondary literature in Germanic studies, and anoverview of the various Germanic languages and dialects and their geographicalextension, their history, and their attestation. It must be conceded that notmuch can be said with certainty on the latter topics in the case ofreconstructed languages (nevertheless, something can be said about thesematters), so this may be a lack particular to the first volume.

In conclusion it must be stressed that this is a very useful book. I await withanticipation the second volume of _A Linguistic History of English_ (fromproto-Germanic to Old English), and it is to be hoped that it will follow soon.

Schrijver, Peter. (2003) Early Developments of the Vowel Systems of North-WestGermanic and Saami. In _Languages in Prehistoric Europe_, ed. by AlfredBammesberger and Theo Vennemann. Heidelberg: Winter, 195–226.